Peer Pressure vs. Pregnancy

Published: March 26, 1987

Any adult with children or a long memory knows that young people steer by peer pressure. Sometimes that produces nothing more than an odd haircut and odder wardrobe. Sometimes, though, it has serious consequences. Like babies.

According to a nationwide survey, the majority of America's teen-agers say they are sexually active by the time they're 17. Combine sexual precocity with contraceptive ignorance or carelessness, and the result is predictable. Each year, 1 of 10 American teen-age girls gets pregnant.

Some of those girls may have thought pregnancy wasn't something that could happen to them. Many accept it as a way to bring some love into their lives, whether that of the father or of the child. Warning a youngster that early childbearing can change, even ruin, her dreams of the future is futile if she has no dreams.

But what if the warning comes from another teen-ager like her? Somebody like Natividad Ortega, 17, who said at a recent Children's Defense Fund conference: ''It should be us who talk to other teen-agers about contraception. We can best help each other. Give us the information.'' But she adds, speaking of the youngsters she counsels at El Puente, a youth center in Brooklyn: ''You can't just tell people to use birth control. . . . Rather, we get into the issue of how they feel about themselves, of what would happen if they did have a baby.''

Next fall the City Volunteer Corps, a kind of Peace Corps for young people in New York, will begin a modest effort to stimulate such peer counseling in the public schools. Two nine-member teams, supervised by health resource coordinators, will go to three junior high schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx to talk with the students about sex, self-esteem and responsibility.

The City Volunteer effort deserves support and careful evaluation. Adults have so far failed to persuade youngsters to delay sexual activity or practice contraception. Maybe, as Natividad Ortega suggests, their peers can succeed.